“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing
its opponents and making them see the light, but
rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that
is familiar with it.”

--Max Planck, German Theoretical Physicist

“Credibility is currency.” One day, this phrase popped
into my mind, and thinking myself quite clever, I “Googled” it, hoping I might
have originated it. Well, I had not. An author whose name I cannot find wrote,
“Credibility is currency; it’s hard to get, and easier to lose.”

This statement applies to virtually every human
endeavor, perhaps none more so than theoretical science -- an inherently
idealistic endeavor to advance human understanding. A “credible” scientist can
have the whole world’s ear, and nothing says “credibility” better than those
three little letters -- PhD.

The work of scientists has an enormous impact on
everyday life. We do not just rely on scientists to help us understand the
natural world. We rely on their viewpoints to guide us in critical personal decisions, including health and lifestyle (remember the
short-lived fervor around the Atkins’ Diet?) The respectable, bespectacled
scientist whom the media cites as an “expert” has the power to change the way
we think, and thus to change the world.

But credibility is a complex tapestry. In addition to
the tangible requirements that any “credible” scientist must possess, there are
intangibles such as honesty, integrity, and openness to new possibilities. On
an individual level, most accredited scientists may indeed possess those
traits. But one cannot judge the validity of a scientific opinion based on an
individual’s “accreditation.”

I suspect that most people find little reason to
question the scientific Establishment. Most of us just assume that the expert
knows what he’s talking about and that he has no reason to deceive us. But few
who are removed from the leading edge of science know that beneath the noble
exterior of many institutions lie many tendencies toward political maneuvering
and manipulation, often with highly destructive consequences. This state of
things should not surprise us. Money, reputations, limited fields of view, and
the momentum of earlier beliefs have always had the power to corrupt free
inquiry and to subtly dissuade individuals from challenging institutionalized
ideas.

But the more severe problem today is unique to the
twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and it is inseparably tied to the
centralized funding of scientific investigations. There are those who believe
that science is not just mistaken on some interesting theoretical
possibilities, but IRREDEEMIBLY wrong on the most fundamental questions science
can ask. But to whom should we listen in order to sort all of
this out? If the critics are correct, billions of tax dollars have been
misdirected and/or completely wasted chasing chimeras. Your response might be,
“OK...but who the heck are you?” The answer is, I’m a layperson who has followed discovery with a
particular interest in the work of independent researchers who are skeptical of
the current scientific consensus. But the term “skeptic” has been so debased
and misused over the years that some interpret the word to mean an opposition
to anything unconventional (i.e. “skepticism” of the paranormal, UFO’s, conspiracies,
etc.). In reality, the word “skeptic,”

has the
precise OPPOSITE meaning. As defined by the American Heritage Dictionary, it
means “One who instinctively or habitually doubts, questions, or disagrees with
assertions or generally accepted conclusions.”

In science today, the “generally accepted conclusions”
are routinely presented as inarguable “facts”. From the Big Bang, to the
evolution of planets, from the nature of comets, to highly speculative and
hidden phenomena such as black holes, dark matter, and dark energy, the big
cosmological picture is presented with such confidence that media in this
country have almost never questioned it. But the picture may be much less clear
than we have been led to believe. Far removed from the spotlight of scientific
media, critics have suggested that a single, fundamental error has infected the
theoretical sciences.

This error is the notion that the Universe is
electrically neutral -- that electricity does not “do anything” in space. It is
a perverse stance given the overwhelming importance of electricity in our
lives.

The most dramatic recent discoveries have consistently
challenged the interpretations of conventional theorists on this point. At the
same time, they have fostered considerable interest in an alternative
hypothesis -- the Electric Universe.

In the study of comets, for instance, researchers have
been so confounded by unexpected discoveries that conventional comet theory no
longer exists! Yet comets are touted as "Rosetta Stones" allowing us
to decipher the formation of the solar system. The “dirty snowball”

hypothesis,
considered theoretical bedrock for decades, has failed resoundingly at
predicting comet behavior and, more recently, comet composition. The most
dramatic surprises began in 1986, with the discovery of negatively charged ions
in the coma of Comet Halley, the signatures of energetic electrical activity,
and the absence of any proof of water on the nucleus. In subsequent years,
comets have produced a steady stream of “mysteries” that have had astronomers
heading back to the drawing boards. These include:

• Comet surfaces
with sharply carved relief – the exact opposite of what astronomers expected under
the “dirty snowball” model.

• Unexpectedly high
temperatures and x-ray emissions from comets’

comas.

• A short supply or
complete absence of water and other volatiles on comets’ nuclei.

• Mineral particles
that can only be formed under extremely high temperatures.

• Comets flaring up
while in "deep freeze", beyond the orbit of Saturn.

• Comets
disintegrating many millions of miles from the Sun.

• Comet dust
particles more finely and evenly divided than is expected for sublimating
“dirty ices”.

• Ejection of larger
particles and “gravel” that was never anticipated under the idea that comets
accreted from primordial clouds of ice, gas, and dust.

• Minerals that can
only be created at high temperatures.

All the above findings pose enormous difficulties for
the “dirty snowball” model; all are predictable features of the electric model.

Nevertheless, the odds are pretty good that you have
never even HEARD of the electric comet hypothesis! (But if you had lived at the
end of the 19th century you could have). This is because the space sciences
have been constructed throughout the 20th century on the theoretical assumption
that bodies in space are electrically neutral. An electric comet would strike
at the foundations of the theoretical sciences today.

If a foundational assumption is incorrect, the
ramifications would reach far beyond comet theory. According to Wallace
Thornhill and other proponents of the Electric Universe, the electric comet is
inextricably linked to the electrical model of the Sun, a model with sweeping

implications:

Dr. Charles E. R Bruce of the Electrical Research
Association in England
set the stage for a scientific model of an “electric sun” in 1944. According to
Bruce, the Sun’s "photosphere has the appearance, the temperature and the
spectrum of an electric arc; it has arc characteristics because it is an
electric arc, or a large number of arcs in parallel." This discharge
characteristic, he claimed, "accounts for the observed granulation of the
solar surface." Bruce’s model, however, was based on a conventional understanding
of atmospheric lightning, allowing him to envision the “electric” Sun without
reference to external electric fields.

Years later, a brilliant engineer, Ralph Juergens,
inspired by Bruce’s work, added a revolutionary possibility. In a series of articles
beginning in 1972, Juergens suggested that the Sun is not an electrically
isolated body in space, but lies within a larger galactic field. With this
hypothesis, Juergens became the first to make the theoretical leap to an
external power source for the Sun.

Juergens proposed that the Sun is the most positively
charged object in the solar system, the center of a weak radial electric field
and the focus of a "coronal glow discharge" fed by galactic currents.
This is why a comet, moving rapidly through the strengthening electric field as
it approaches the Sun, begins to discharge under the electric stresses.

To avoid misunderstanding of this concept, it is
essential that we distinguish the complex, electrodynamic glow discharge model
of the Sunfrom
a simple electrostatic model that can be easily dismissed.

Throughout most of the volume of a glow discharge the
plasma is "quasi"

neutral,
with almost equal numbers of protons and electrons. A similar situation exists
inside a fluorescent light tube. The current is carried primarily by a drift of
electrons in a weak electric field toward the positive electrode (the Sun). It
is only beneath the corona, close to the Sun, that the electric field becomes
strong enough to generate all of the brilliant and energetic phenomena we
observe on the Sun.

In the electric model, the Sun’s external energy
source is the reason why temperatures rise SPECTACULARLY with distance from the
surface of the Sun -- precisely the reverse of what one would expect if heat
were radiating from the Sun’s core. From about 4400 degrees K at 500 kilometers
(300 miles) above the photosphere, the temperature rises steadily to about
20,000 degrees K at the top of the chromosphere, some 2200 kilometers (1200
miles) above the Sun’s surface. At this point an abrupt increase occurs,
eventually reaching 2 million degrees in the corona. And even farther from the
Sun, the energetic activity of ionized oxygen atoms reaches an astonishing 200
million degrees! This is the last thing one would expect of a nuclear furnace
hidden in the core of the Sun. But it is the observed nature of a corona
discharge.

Electrical theorists point out some two dozen or more
defining features of the Sun that pose problems for standard theory, ranging
from “difficult” to “impossible” to explain. In each case, the observed feature
follows logically from the glow discharge model. Perhaps the most telling
illustration of this contrast is the issue of the solar wind. The Sun
continually emits a stream of positively charged particles, but these particles
are not only unaffected by the Sun’s gravity, they continue to accelerate away
from the Sun. Since the discovery of this mysterious behavior decades ago,
solar theorists have never set forth an explanation that could withstand scrutiny.
They thought they had a partial explanation when they claimed that solar
radiation (the light from the Sun) continued to push the charged particles
outward. To the electrical theorists, this was not only a feeble explanation
but also one that lacked any support in experimentation, which should be the
first resort.

Electrical theorists are, in fact, disturbed by the
inability of the scientific mainstream to see what they regard as obvious. All
electrical engineers know that there is a simple way to accelerate charged
particles -- they do it regularly with electric fields. If the Sun is a charged
body at the center of an electric field, the acceleration of charged particles
by this field is a given.

The most compelling example of this principle occurred
between January 15th and 19th of 2005, when four powerful solar flares erupted
from “sunspot 720.” Then on January 20th, the fifth explosion produced a
coronal mass ejection (CME) with velocities well beyond the ability of any
conventional model to account for. As summarized on the Thunderbolts Picture of
the Day, “While it often takes more than 24 hours for the charged particles of
a solar outburst to reach the Earth, this one was a profound exception. Just
thirty minutes after the explosion, Earth (some 96 million miles from the Sun)
was immersed in what NASA scientists called “the most intense proton storm in
decades.”

It is particularly telling that it is almost
impossible to find, in any mainstream attempt to explain the solar wind, any
memory of this event.

The point here is not just that the electric model
accounts for the most troubling difficulties faced by standard theory. The
model is part of a larger, more unified picture of the cosmos. Just as the
electric comet leads inevitably to the electric Sun, both the electric comet
and the electric sun suggest a radically new perspective on all of the
theoretical sciences reaching from planetary history to the origins of the
cosmos.

Wallace Thornhill, for example, suggests that the
electric comet offers the best model for comprehending the surface features of
planets and moons. Unacknowledged evidence accumulated in the Space Age makes
clear that planets are charged bodies. Unstable motions within the electric
field of the Sun, or motions bringing planets into close encounters, would lead
to devastating electrical discharge events, with planets themselves taking on
possible “comet-like” attributes. It is essential, therefore, that an open
reconsideration of planetary history be given a high priority. And this
investigation must include the possibility that planets were, in earlier times,
immersed in electrical discharge, their surfaces carved by high-energy
electrical events. In other words, what is occurring on active comets is a
direct pointer to the forces acting on planets in an earlier epoch of planetary
evolution.

Space exploration has continually revealed features on
planets and other rocky bodies that cannot be explained by impacts from space
or familiar planetary geology (volcanism, water erosion, or surface

spreading.)
Since we first pointed telescopes at the Moon, the single geologic feature that
has most entranced astronomers is craters. For decades, the unresolved issue
was whether craters on the moon were formed by volcanism or impact. With the
Apollo space program, astronomers believed that the issue was settled. The
dominating craters on the moon were created by celestial objects striking the
surface, planetary scientists said.

This conclusion seemed so clear that virtually no one
paused sufficiently to notice the litany of facts about lunar craters that throw
the entire hypothesis into doubt. Once the impact model took hold, astronomers
and geologists sought to replicate experimentally the unique patterns of
cratering on the moon and elsewhere in the solar system. On occasion, news
releases touted the “successes” of such experiments, but at a more fundamental
and scientific level, where detailed cratering patterns demanded experimental
confirmation, the experiments proved to be a failure. The features of
high-velocity impact craters do not match the features of the lunar craters.
Nor do they match up with the features of craters we observe so abundantly on
the surface of Mars or on the moons of Jupiter and Saturn and other rocky
bodies in the solar system. This failure of impact experiments, however, does not
appear to have been the subject of any news releases.

The anomalies include (to name
just a few):

•remarkable
circularity of almost all craters of all sizes. Oblique impacts should form
many oval craters; • lack of collateral damage expected if the crater
circularity were due to a near-ground explosion like a thermonuclear
detonation; • flat-bottomed, melted crater floors instead of dish
shaped excavationfrom
impact blast. Impacts and high-energy explosions—even atomic bombs—do not melt enough material to create flat floors.

• many craters with
steep walls rather than the shallow dish shape expected from a supersonic
impact blast; • unexpected terracing of large crater walls, with
melted floors of some terraces; • inordinate numbers of secondary craters centered on
the rims of larger craters; • absence of larger craters cutting through smaller
craters; •
intricate chains of small craters along the rims of larger craters; • far too many
crater pairs and crater chains; • minimal disturbance where one crater cuts into
another; •
repeated, highly “improbable” associations of craters with adjoining cleanly
cut gouges and rilles, from which material has simply disappeared; • rays of “ejecta”
tangential to the crater rim; • concentric rings.

Rather than consider these challengers, planetary
scientists have stopped asking the most important questions. Indeed, they have
yet to consider a fact of overwhelming importance to the future of planetary

science:
All of the primary cratering patterns in the solar system can be produced by
electric discharge in the laboratory. This cannot be said of any other
causative agent explored in the space age.

Our neighbor Mars, the most studied planet in the
solar system (outside the earth) offers almost limitless examples. The Martian
surface reveals global evidence of violent electric scarring.

The stupendous chasm Valles Marineris stretches across
more than 3000 miles -- the equivalent of hundreds of Grand Canyons. In the
early 70s, engineer Ralph Juergens posited that in an earlier period of
planetary instability, electrical arcs between charged celestial bodies created
many of the features on Mars. In 1974, Juergens wrote of Valles

Marineris:

“[T]his region resembles nothing so much as an area
zapped by a powerful electric arc advancing unsteadily across the surface,
occasionally splitting in two, and now and then weakening, so that its traces
narrow and even degrade into lines of disconnected craters.”

At first, planetary scientists speculated that water
erosion was the agent that created Valles Marineris, but this notion was
refuted by higher resolution images. Now, some favor surface spreading and
rifting. But upon close examination, no surface spreading is evident.

So what happened to all of the “missing” material? In
the electrical hypothesis, it was excavated explosively by a process called
electric discharge machining (EDM). And the resulting debris not only was
strewn across the surface of Mars but also much of it was accelerated
electrically into space. From this vantage point, it is not a coincidence that
even today meteorites from Mars are falling upon the earth.

One of the most fascinating geologic anomalies on Mars
is the presence of so-called “blueberries” -- blue-gray bb-sized spherules
embedded in the iron-rich Martian soil. After spectroscopic analysis, the
spherules were identified as “hematite concretions.” The formative process of
the “blueberries” remains enigmatic to planetary scientists. Plasma physicist
Dr. CJ Ransom of Vemasat Laboratories, however, conducted his own experiment to
test the electrical explanation of concretions and Martian blueberries. He
blasted a quantity of hematite with an electric arc, and the result was embedded
spherules with features similar to the blueberries on Mars. No other laboratory
experiment has produced a similar result. (See Martian “Blueberries” in the
Lab,

A significant feature of electric discharge is its
SCALABILITY -- what is observed on a small scale is also observed on larger
scales. And the Martian “blueberries” may have a much larger analog in the form
of domed craters on the planet. Orbiting cameras have found numerous craters
with domes or spheres resting within them. These domed craters range in size
from a hundred meters or less (the limit of the camera’s

resolution)
up to a kilometer or more. The similarities between these domed craters and the
laboratory “blueberries”, many of which form inside craters, are striking. This
alone should be more than sufficient to encourage further investigation. (See
Domed Craters on Mars,

To proponents of the Electric Universe, the geologic
evidence of electric scarring on planets and other rocky bodies is a compelling
testament to planetary violence and instability in the past. The notion of an
unstable solar system in the recent past was put forth by Immanuel Velikovsky
in his 1950 bestselling book Worlds in Collision.

Although Velikovsky was summarily dismissed by the
scientific mainstream, the Space Age has done more to support Velikovsky than
to refute him!

While Electric Universe proponents Wal Thornhill and
his colleagues acknowledge that Velikovsky was wrong on several points, they
agree with Velikovsky that electromagnetism was the key to an earlier epoch of
planetary catastrophe. And today, evidence has become overwhelming that we live
in an “electrically connected” solar system.

In the case of Jupiter, we see this electrical
connectivity between the planet and its closest moon, Io. In 1979, Cornell
astrophysicist Thomas Gold proposed in the journal Science that the “volcanoes”
on Io were actually plasma discharge plumes. Gold’s hypothesis was dismissed in
the same journal by Gene Shoemaker, et al. But in 1987, plasma physicists Alex
Dessler and Anthony Peratt supported Gold’s interpretation in an article
published in the journal Astrophysics and Space Science. Dessler and Peratt
argued that both the filamentary penumbra and the convergence of ejecta into
well-defined rings are plasma discharge effects that have no counterpart in
volcanoes.

Later, the Galileo probe recorded amazing images of
the “volcanoes” and found precisely what was predicted by electrical theorist
Thornhill:

temperatures so high that they saturated the cameras; MOVEMENT of
the “volcanoes” across the surface; and location of “volcanoes” along the
cliffs of previously excavated valleys. It is now indisputable that the basis
of Shoemaker’s “rebuttal” of the Gold hypothesis was incorrect.

It is also indisputable that Thornhill’s highly
specific predictions were correct. And yet, neither the journal Science, nor
any other scientific publication, has even revisited the question. (See
Retrospective on Io,

On Mars, monstrous “dust devils” -- some ten times
larger than any tornados on Earth -- have exposed planetary scientists’ disinterest
in all things electrical. A NASA press release stated, ‘When humans visit Mars,
they’ll have to watch out for towering electrified dust devils.”

But they attribute the electric fields of the “dust
devils” to solar heating and the resulting mechanical energy of air convection
(despite the fact that the Martian atmosphere is less than one percent as dense
as Earth’s, and the mechanical ability of its air to move dust particles is at
best improbable). In the Electric Universe interpretation, rotating columns of
air and dust are a natural consequence of atmospheric electric currents. (See
NASA on Martian Dust Devils -- “They’re Electrified!”

In meteorological phenomena on Earth, we witness
planetary charge as well. It is no longer possible to think of the Earth as an
isolated, electrically neutral body when we observe giant bolts of lightning
from above storm clouds discharging INTO space. Since the early 1990s,
investigators have been documenting forms of lightning called “sprites”

and “blue
jets” leaping upwards from storms as much as 15 kilometers towards space. Some
giant “jets” shot up to 80 kilometers. These investigators found that every
time there was a “sprite” above the clouds there was a bolt of positive
lightning below the clouds. They were each parts of a single discharge that
stretched from space to the Earth’s surface. (See Giant Lightning to Space,

It has been said that mathematicians, when considering
questions of physics, “have no principles.” They do not consider themselves
bound by physics. And there is obvious glee when some “unexplained” phenomenon
seems to offer the possible discovery of a “new” physical law or principle.
This can be much more appealing than a straightforward answer from a discipline
in which the mathematician is untrained. None of the evidence we’ve noted here,
for example, is a violation of any existing physical law or principle. The
patterns we’ve noted find ready explanations in electrical phenomena. Yet space
science continues to ignore the electric force in favor of speculative
solutions, clinging to assumptions that are no longer tenable.

At first, astronomers were convinced that space was a
perfect vacuum, and electric currents seemed inconceivable. Then astronomers
discovered that space is pervaded by charged particles, or plasma. In the face
of this discovery, astronomers wrongly concluded that charge separation could
not be maintained in space; any charge would be quickly neutralized by the
movement of charge (electric current). But as every electrical engineer knows,
that conclusion depends upon the current-carrying ability of the plasma. In the
sparse plasma of space, current-carrying ability is undeniably present, but
limited. The result is that cosmic scale currents generated by the relative
movement of dissimilar plasma regions can be sustained over long time spans.
The signature of such electric currents is their magnetic fields. But when
magnetic fields were detected in space astronomers considered them to be
"frozen in" to the plasma -- as if the plasma were superconducting

-- in order to maintain the
notion of electrical neutrality. But space plasma is not a superconductor.
External electrical energy must be supplied to maintain the observed magnetic
fields in space.

From the larger
circuit of the Milky Way, currents flow into the Sun’s domain. At planetary
distances from the Sun, the field is imperceptibly weak. But as the current
“pinches down” toward the Sun, the electric power is sufficient to light the
Sun. A comet spends most of its time in the weakest part of the field far from
the Sun and may balance its voltage with that field. But as the comet
accelerates nearer the Sun, it grows profoundly out of balance with its
environment and begins to discharge. Astronomers have missed such fundamental
points for a reason no one wants to admit: they are embarrassingly untrained in
electrodynamics. This is why electrical engineers have a tremendous advantage
in understanding electrical activities in space. An arc welder could more
easily understand the rilles and craters on solid surfaces than a planetary
scientist. But rather than expand their knowledge to include electricity,
astronomers and cosmologists have instead contracted the space sciences into a
narrow field of “elegant”

(pretentious or irrelevant)
theories.

Every day we hear of great advances and discoveries in
the quest to identify invisible -- and supposedly ubiquitous -- things such as
dark matter, dark energy, neutron stars and black holes. These conjectures are
necessary because cosmologists remain unaware of plasma's ability to organize
structure in space. (See Plasma Galaxies,

And the WEIRDNESS of their conjectures continues to
grow, to the point that the current picture of the cosmos resembles the most
“spacey” Star Trek episodes.

It is tragic that the scientific Establishment --
working hand in hand with popular media -- has succeeded in convincing many
that the largest cosmological questions are the sole domain of mathematicians.
The very fact that mathematics is commonly looked to for a “theory of
everything” reveals the blunder of this thinking. As Electric Universe
proponent Thornhill writes, “The very notion that some scientists are within
grasp of a ‘theory of everything’ is a fantasy on a par with the flat Earth
theory. It is not possible to have a theory of everything until we know
everything about the universe. And given the almost continual surprises from
space, we evidently know very little.”

Thornhill continues, “Those who would aspire to a
theory of everything are told they must undertake ‘the grueling complex and abstract
mathematics’ required for the task. Who says so? Mathematicians,
of course. It is a chronically narrow view, like looking through the
wrong end of the telescope and imagining you see stars. This view has led to
elitism in physics based on mathematical ability. Most bizarre have been those
who claim to see God in their own image -- as a mathematician.”

It is not the least bit audacious for the common
person to question the tenability of popular scientific theories. In fact, it
is often the non-specialist, one who is less encumbered by prior beliefs and
conflicts of interest, who can more easily discern what is before his eyes.
This is particularly true when it comes to the challenges posed by the Electric
Universe hypothesis. The electric theorists, as opposed to pure mathematicians,
deal more strictly with what can be predicted, observed, and repeated. Thanks
to the Space Age, the evidence is there for those willing to see it.

Increasingly, the public is expressing doubt about the
directions of popular theory. What they get in response is assurances that the
“pieces of the puzzle” are falling into place. But those who follow discovery
with a “skeptical” eye see things much differently. The credibility of science
cannot be sustained through self-congratulation.

And it is only in the best interest of scientific
institutions to open the door to discussions long ago excluded. In fact, the
future of science depends on it.